By Tawfiq Zubairu, Current Sustainability Student

As part of our spring ’25 capstone project, my partner Wasiu Alimi and I have been working on developing strategies to address flooding in Lokoja through Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) that also integrate renewable energy generation.

Being a Kogi native, this work is personally meaningful. While it’s a departure from my electrical engineering background, it has been incredibly rewarding to develop new skills in geospatial and meteorological analysis and spark an interest in the dynamic interactions between urban environments and natural systems.

A highlight of this journey was attending the Waterfront Alliance‘s annual conference, where I met Kongjian Yu, a pioneer of the sponge city concept for sustainable water management. His insights introduced me to new perspectives that are now shaping our design approach.

We wrapped the semester by presenting our findings on the causes of the flooding in Lokoja, including the confluence river flow patterns, rainfall intensity, and runoff behavior. The fall semester will be focused on developing a solution guided by data and shaped through direct discussions with the impacted communities.

Special thanks to Naresh Devineni, Wasiu Alimi, Katherine Gloede Silverman, & Salawu A. Zubairu, mni, FCA, FCTI, CIPFA (my dad!), for their ongoing support! I am excited to keep tackling this problem and share more progress by the year’s end.